Official Engagements

David Cameron: May I first thank the Prime Minister for his statement, and join him in paying tribute to our security services? Nothing matters more than our national security and keeping us safe from terror. Our aim should be to catch, convict and imprison more terrorists. Last year, I pressed Tony Blair to make intercept evidence available in court. When he was not prepared to take that up straight away, I suggested that a cross-party committee of Privy Councillors look at how intercept might be used in court. I am glad that that is now complete. I join the Prime Minister in thanking all of those who took part. They have done their job, and now he must do his. Will he confirm that the implementation group that he intends to set up will not be a talking shop for further delay, but a vehicle for making the recommendations happen? Will he give us a commitment to Government legislation as soon as possible?
	Does the Prime Minister agree that up till now there have been four issues that have held back the use of intercept evidence in court: first, a clear recommendation from an independent body that that is the right and necessary thing to do to protect our country; secondly, a lack of a clear understanding of the benefits that it could bring in criminal and terrorist trials; thirdly, a satisfactory method of protecting vital intelligence-gathering techniques; and fourthly, a legal framework to ensure that the effective use of intercept in court can happen while maintaining a fair trial? Does the Prime Minister agree that the report effectively gives good answers to all four questions? Let me take them in turn.
	First, a clear recommendation—the report is admirably clear when it says:
	"We therefore agree with the principle that intercept as evidence should be introduced."
	Does the Prime Minister agree that, as this is the first Government-commissioned report by a group of people who are independent from the Government, that is an incredibly powerful recommendation? Secondly, the real benefits of using intercept in court—does the Prime Minister agree that the report does not just cite experience from abroad, but quotes the UK's Crown Prosecution Service? Is not the CPS clear that the use of intercept will significantly influence the course of trials and—it finds—lead to more guilty pleas and fewer abortive trials?
	The third issue is the importance of protecting intelligence sources and methods. Does the Prime Minister agree that the report is extremely helpful in that respect, too? In particular, does he agree with the report when it states that
	"Australia does appear to us to be a compelling example of how intercept as evidence can be used in a Common Law jurisdiction"?
	Is it not extremely helpful that the report states:
	"The Australian example, in particular, provides a number of interesting ideas for how the UK could attempt to derive benefit from intercept as evidence, whilst not unacceptably increasing the risk of disclosure to intelligence agencies and their sensitive capabilities and techniques"?
	Fourthly, there is the question of legal model to get the recommendations right. The issue is how we both protect intelligence sources and maintain a fair trial. Does the Prime Minister agree with the report specifically that a reinforced system of public interest immunity could enable the evidence to be used in a way that protects the intelligence services, but guarantees a fair trial?
	Finally, let me ask about plans for implementation. The report will mean nothing unless it is implemented. I know that the Prime Minister is establishing a cross-party advisory group. Will he guarantee that he will accept our nomination of a Privy Councillor for that group? Does he understand that there will be a nagging suspicion that setting up another committee to look at the implementation of the recommendations will lead to delay? Does he accept that there will never be unanimity in Whitehall on the matter? Another committee will deliberate, reflect and no doubt have different views. That is what committees do. That is what happens in Whitehall. Does he agree that, at the end of the day, it is a political decision and has to be made by a politician—and that means him?
	It is clear what needs to be done: intercept in court so that we catch, convict and imprison more terrorists. Does the Prime Minister agree that we must not put off endlessly what needs to be done?

Nicholas Clegg: I, too, thank the Prime Minister for advance sight of his statement and the report. I pay tribute to Sir John and all his colleagues for having produced what is self-evidently a very thorough and rigorous report on a sensitive and delicate issue. I warmly welcome the fact that they have opened the door to allowing intercept evidence to become admissible in court, even though that door is only ajar and further work needs to be done to make the issue a reality. We have long argued that intercept evidence should be admissible in court, in keeping with so many other jurisdictions around the world. That is part of our wider belief that we can and should do more to strengthen our judicial system so that there are more prosecutions in anti-terror cases.
	I welcome the Prime Minister's emphasis on a cross-party approach on this issue; I regret that there is not that emphasis on other important issues in the anti-terrorism debate—notably, the extension of the period of detention without charge. Given that we have made so much progress on this issue and on issues such as post-charge questioning, I urge him to revisit the need for a further extension—to up to 42 days—of the period during which the police can detain people without charge.
	May I ask the Prime Minister three specific questions about the mechanics of what happens after the production of the Chilcot report? First, I acknowledge and understand that it is unlikely if not impossible for any further implementation recommendations to be produced during the passage of the Counter-Terrorism Bill through the House. However, will he be more specific and commit that the work will at least be complete during this Parliament? Without a timetable, legitimate fears will be provoked that there will just be delay on delay in the crucial implementing phase of the process.
	Secondly, will the Prime Minister clarify exactly what the relationship will be between the implementation group and the advisory group? It is, of course, a good thing that the advisory group will have a cross-party composition, but if it is to have a somewhat passive, observatory role, it will not play the function that many people want it to play: to hold the implementation group's feet to the fire to ensure that the Chilcot report recommendations are followed up in detail in the months ahead.
	Finally, although I realise that it would be inappropriate to name the individual civil servants in the implementation group, will the Prime Minister at least enumerate which Departments and agencies will be part of it, so that once it reaches conclusions there will be an endorsement, on behalf of all the Government and all the Government agencies, of the group's implementing recommendations?

Gordon Brown: Let us remember that for all these 20 years intercept has been used; it is just that it has not been used in courts of law. The question now is whether we can establish a scheme that will work. We have already agreed that the British system is unique and that the scheme cannot simply be one taken off the shelf from other countries. I believe that all the parties now agree that certain tests have to be met. We are going to proceed speedily and comprehensively to answer those questions. I hope, like the hon. Gentleman, that we will be able to come up with a conclusion that is satisfactory to all parties in the House.

Keith Vaz: I beg to move
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to exclude from the operation of the Race Relations Act 1976 and the Race Relations (Northern Ireland) Order 1997 certain matters relating to the selection of candidates by political parties.
	The United Kingdom is a diverse nation. A snapshot of what it means to be British today would surely provide us with a mosaic reflecting the many cultures, ethnicities and religions that make up our population. Post-war and post-colonial migration flows have enriched our country with more than just numbers of people. Every town, city and region has benefited from Leicester to London, from Wembley to Wigan and from Sunderland to Southall. It is not only the composition of our population that has changed, but the composition of our national identity—our Britishness.
	The change in our national identity must be reflected in the way we think of ourselves as a country, represent ourselves to others and, most importantly, in the composition of our Parliament. It is that change that must be reflected, and I intend to address it in my Bill. I am delighted to see the Leader of the House of Commons, who is also the Minister for Women and Equality, on the Front Bench because she has championed the cause of equality throughout her long political life.
	There are currently 15 ethnic minority Members of this House: 13 Labour Members and two Conservatives. As the House knows, the 2001 census reported a 50 per cent. increase in our ethnic population over the last 10 years. The lack of such representation in Parliament is therefore truly disappointing. If Parliament were to reflect adequately the population of ethnic minority citizens, there would be 58 ethnic minority Members of this House. At the current rate at which ethnic minority Members are taking up seats in Parliament, it would take 75 years to achieve a proportion that would reflect the ethnic minority population of our country.
	Since 1987, when I was elected along with the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), Mr. Paul Boateng and the late Bernie Grant, progress has been painfully slow. There were two more ethnic minority Members in 1992, three more in 1997, two more in 2001, four in 2005, and five in by-elections over the last 21 years. It is not that there is a lack of talent, numbers or desire to come to this place, but it is clear that ethnic minorities still face proportionately more hurdles than others in getting elected to this House. This Bill seeks to address the problems of imbalance in representation through the democratic decisions of our political parties, but there is no miracle cure.
	The race issue does not have to be divisive; race can be used in a positive way to electrify the political process. Striving for the Democratic nomination in the United States, we have a candidate who embodies the multi-ethnic, multicultural and international character of its society: Barack Obama. Born to a Kenyan father and an American mother, and having spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, Senator Obama is a poster boy for the integration and amalgamation that has taken place globally—the mixing of cultures and consequent reforming of identities.
	The American system is, of course, different from ours. An individual in that country can seek and win their party's nomination at a local, state, and national level through their force of personality and their ability to secure funding. The party structure cannot stop them. In Britain, that is not possible; we have a strong party system. However, so far that system has delivered just 23 ethnic minority Members of this House in the history of British politics. Those dismal facts speak for themselves. We need to change our attitudes and the law so that a new vision can be made a reality.
	I would invite Members to look at what a change in the law did for the representation of women in Parliament. A few years ago, Parliament legalised all-women shortlist in elections. The result was that for the first time in history, there were more women in the new intake than men—65 per cent. were women. All women-shortlists were described at the time as a "hammer to break the glass ceiling". That ceiling now needs to be broken for ethnic minorities. The changes in 2002 highlighted how shortlists allow us to take a step ahead on the road to a more equally representative Parliament. Since the election of Nancy Astor as the first female Member of Parliament, 290 women have taken up seats. That is, as I am sure the House will know, not even half of a single parliamentary intake.
	The Bill proposes to allow for the creation of shortlists on the grounds of ethnicity in the selection of parliamentary candidates. It will be a voluntary, optional means of addressing the imbalance we see today, and it will not oblige or compel parties in any way. Positive action is achieved by exempting the selection of candidates from the provisions of the Race Relations Act 1976. Clause 1 will insert a new clause in the 1976 Act, exempting registered political parties from the main provisions of that Act, provided, of course, that that process is adopted for the purpose of reducing inequalities for the different ethnic groups from which individuals are elected. Clause 2 allows for the exact same provisions to be made in Northern Ireland, aside from one difference, namely that it allows for this process to apply to the Northern Ireland Assembly and to district councils, as well as to elections for the Westminster and European Parliaments. Clause 3 is a sunset clause, which provides that the Act will expire in 15 years' time, unless extended by an order of the Secretary of State.
	Some may argue that a problem exists regarding which boundaries and terms can be used to define an "ethnic minority". I can assure the House that ethnic minorities know exactly who they are, and so do the political parties; they will be well able to identify them. The creation of ethnic minority shortlists will undoubtedly see more ethnic minorities taking up seats in Parliament, which will mean a Parliament that mirrors the society it represents, a Parliament that citizens can identify with and a Parliament that better reflects their needs. It will encourage many more to engage in civic society and afford them a greater sense of belonging.
	In the 21st century politics of our country no one must be left out. The Bill will allow parties to be more creative in the way that they choose parliamentary candidates, while remaining an optional, not compulsory, measure. The Conservative party already has a fast-track system, called the A-list, which, only two weeks' ago, produced a black woman as a successor to the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe). Organisations such as the 1990 Trust and individuals such as Simon Woolley of Operation Black Vote have long campaigned for more equal representation, and on the need to address this deficit in our democracy. The Under-Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Lammy) has also informed me that he supports the Bill.
	This Bill is merely the beginning. I do not pretend that it is a long-term solution but it is the one thing we can do today that will bring about a speedy change. We must target both ends of this problem. The ball is now firmly in the court of the Prime Minister, the right hon. Members for Witney (Mr. Cameron), for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg) and for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley), the hon. Members for Moray (Angus Robertson) and for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd), and their respective political parties. With the selection of parliamentary candidates for the next election well under way, the Bill is a wake-up call for the political parties. We have waited long enough. It is time for more action and less talk. Let us begin the process of change, and let us start now.

Philip Hammond: I beg to move to leave out from "House" to end and to insert instead thereof:
	"disapproves of the Government's policy towards the Treaty of Lisbon in respect of provisions concerning the single market; notes that the Treaty proper now contains no reference to undistorted competition as one of the activities of the European Union, and indeed relegates to a protocol any mention of competition that is not distorted, with significant implications for the interpretation of European Union law; deplores the Government's failure to block this change during the negotiations; and is concerned that the result could be the revival of protectionism in the European Union wholly contrary to Government policy and damaging to the interest both of the United Kingdom and of the European Union.".
	People are rightly angry about many aspects of the Government's handling of the treaty of Lisbon: their incompetence in negotiating on Britain's behalf; the casual way in which Britain's self-interest has been abandoned by those charged with protecting it; and above all, the breach of trust with the British people in refusing to hold the promised referendum. However, amid the concerns about the impact of the treaty on matters such as foreign and security policy, justice and migration, relatively little attention has been paid to the way in which one of the best and most successful elements of the European structure has been consciously relegated to the sidelines. The purpose of our amendment is to change that.
	For 50 years, the creation of what was first called the Common Market, then the single market, and now the internal market, has been at the heart of the European Economic Community and subsequently the European Union. Underlying it was the simple proposition that economic collaboration between the nations of Europe delivers prosperity, and prosperity delivers peace. Now, quite deliberately and with the connivance of the British Government, this treaty downgrades the objective of an open and competitive single market from its place at the heart of the EU's agenda to an obscure protocol tacked on to the back of the treaty, and it undermines at a stroke one of the undoubted successes of the last 50 years, and just about the only bit of the EU structure that enjoys almost universal support.

Vincent Cable: Or Liberal Democrat, for that matter. Yes, there almost certainly would be greater restraint, but I think that we all accept that that is not the debate that we are having now. I think that all parties are committed to having a referendum on that possibility, if it arises in future, as it may well do.
	Of course there are concerns about the single market. First, many UK businesses worry that their liberalisation is not reciprocated. A few days ago I was at Royal Mail's south-west London sorting office—a very efficient installation. When I looked out of the window, I saw the headquarters of TNT, a Dutch competitor. The general manager said, "I'm all for liberalising the Royal Mail market, but why can't the Germans, the Dutch and the French do the same?" and he is quite right. The logic is that prising open the other European markets will require stronger, not weaker, intervention by the Commission and the European Court of Justice.
	Precisely the same point can be made about areas in which there is frustration about the slowness of the single market's progress—a point to which the Conservative spokesman referred. The obvious example is services. It has taken years to get any kind of agreement on services in Europe. The agreement that we reached in 2006 is fairly weak; it does not respect the underlying principle of the origin of the country concerned, which is what would really open up a services market, which does exist. Clearly, for services liberalisation to progress faster, there would have to be more qualified majority voting and more European Union decision making on the matter.
	Finally on the single market, the right hon. Member for Wells said that all progress has come at a price—at the cost of regulation in Europe. He is right up to a point. There is a lot of unnecessary bureaucracy associated with European regulations and directives. Of course, we have often compounded it by gold-plating them here. The Secretary of State was right to point out that there is now a process—the Lamfalussy process—for making the system much more efficient. The question that I would pose to the right hon. Member for Wells if he was still in the Chamber is this: what is the counter-factual case? What is the alternative to having a bureaucratic regulation? It is probably having 27 bureaucratic regulations across Europe, which would compound the cost many times over.
	Let me briefly cover the items allocated for today's debate, and to the treaty powers relating to economic matters. The euro procedures clearly do not apply; I answered an intervention on that point. Other issues include the definition of the framework for commercial policy, which I do not think is controversial, and the co-ordinated approach to self-employment. I would have thought that such an approach was sensible. We have rules governing freedom of capital and professionals, but not self-employment, as would be logical.
	The issues to do with intellectual property rights are trickier. As I understand it, the measures will make it easier to have common European Union rules on copyright, trademarks and patents, which will make it easier to do business that involves them, and that will be good for British intellectual property right holders. However, as the Secretary of State conceded, when it comes to patents, the tricky issue of language has not been resolved. We will still not have unanimity, and that is a source of frustration. As the author of the Cable Bill—that famous copyright protection legislation—I look forward to seeing copyright protected across the whole of Europe, in a way that accords with the sanctions that I introduced in the House. Those are not issues on which there is a great deal of controversy.
	On the important contribution made by the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson), one of the less discussed issues is that of what are called general services, of which the NHS is an obvious example. My understanding of the protocol governing the treaty is that it does not take us very far towards a common approach to NHS entitlements. In fact, article 2 of the protocol says:
	"The provisions of the Treaties do not affect in any way the competence of Member States to provide, commission and organise non-economic services of general interest "
	The basic principles of the NHS would therefore remain pretty much intact, as I understand it.
	However, I disagree with the right hon. Gentleman to some degree. He was right to say that the Liberal Democrats were sympathetic to the Watts ruling. The question that we would ask is this: if it is right for people to buy a house, travel or exchange goods in Europe, what is wrong with their trying to pursue a higher life expectancy in countries that have better cancer treatment? Surely common sense would say that that is a reasonable expectation in an integrated market. People will do that, and as long as the basic frameworks of the NHS remain intact, I do not see anything fundamentally wrong with enlarging the concept of a single market to include health.

Vincent Cable: That is absolutely true, but the right hon. Gentleman was also questioning people's ability to spend their own money, was he not, through co-financing? That is a much bigger debate, and I understand the sensitivities around it. We share a commitment to the British national health service, but we also want choice to be extended.
	Finally, I shall deal with the issue on which the Conservative spokesman spent so much time: the threat to the competitive market within Europe presented by the Sarkozy approach to national champions. The hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge is right to stress the current spasm of economic nationalist thinking about energy companies and so on, not just in France but in Spain and Italy and sometimes in Germany and elsewhere.
	We should not be totally self-righteous about this. We have had and continue to have national champions of our own, but they take a different form. The debates that I have tried to provoke in the House on BAE Systems relate to a British national champion where politics and commerce have become rather dangerously intertwined. We should not be too pious on the matter, but the hon. Gentleman is right that there was a retreat from a commitment in the treaty to an undistorted internal market.
	The objective legal position remains very much as the right hon. Member for Leicester, West said: we have exactly the set of rules governing the single market and competition policy that prevailed before. Neelie Kroes, the Dutch Liberal who presides over competition policy, has spelled out clearly where we currently stand. The protocol on internal market and competition which was agreed at the European Council clearly repeats that competition policy is fundamental to the internal market. It retains the competition rules that have served us for 50 years, and reaffirms the European Commission's duties as the independent Commission enforcement authority for Europe. Nothing formally has changed, although the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge is right that there is a change of mood that is potentially worrying and it is right to signal our concerns about that.
	In conclusion, it has always been understood that we on the Liberal Democrat Benches are strong supporters of the European project. We are not uncritical. There are areas where we have fundamental disagreements. We have been critical of agricultural policy, particularly its protectionist features. We have been critical of the European budget and voted against it a few weeks ago. We believe that there should be more subsidiarity, including in areas of social policy, which should not be prescriptively applied at a European level. None the less, the fundamentals of the European project are sound, they are reflected in the treaty, and that is why we support it.

Treaty of Lisbon (No.4)

David Gauke: The point I am making is that the current balance is not quite right and that regulation is too heavy-handed. Ministers share that point of view, although I am unsure whether the hon. Lady does. Given the consensus we have on wishing to bring down trade barriers and on the regulatory burdens in the EU being too high, we must examine how the treaty performs in addressing those problems—and it clearly fails.
	The heart of the matter is the issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) and other Members have raised: the dropping of the objective of free and undistorted competition from the objectives of the EU. That is important. That was a concession made by Tony Blair to the French President, shortly before President Sarkozy became the leading supporter of Mr. Blair's campaign to become president of Europe, but the Government argue that it does not really matter, as it is all in a protocol. What that point of view fails to appreciate is that European Court of Justice interpretations of the provisions of treaties tend to place greater weight on the preamble and the early articles. Evidence to support that comes from Professor Alan Riley of the City university in London, who wrote for the Centre of Policy Studies:
	"No mere protocol can achieve the same interpretative status as the preamble and the first few articles",
	and he supports that assertion with a long list of examples from case law.
	Antonio Bavasso, visiting professor of competition law at University college London and a partner with Allen & Overy, said the following about the changes as a consequences of this deal:
	"the political significance of the change cannot be overstated...The foundations of competition enforcement are now weaker."
	Both those independent experts make the argument that the change will weaken what we see as our objective—free and undistorted competition. I know that many Labour Members do not support that view.

Michael Lord: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 231, page 1, line 12, after 'excluding', insert—
	'(i) Article 2, paragraph 12, inserted Article 2B TEC (TFEU), paragraph 1(e) providing for the common commercial policy to be an area of exclusive competence of the European Union; and
	(ii) '.
	No. 232, page 1, line 12, after 'excluding', insert—
	'(i) Article 2, paragraph 12, inserted Article 2C TEC (TFEU), paragraph 2(a) providing for the internal market to be an area of shared competence of the European Union and Member States; and
	(ii) '.
	No. 219, page 1, line 12, after 'excluding', insert—
	'(i) Article 2, paragraphs 40 to to 45, inserted Title I and Articles 22a and 22b, renumbered Title Ia, amended Article 23(1), inserted Chapter Ia and Article 27a TEC (TFEU) relating to the internal market; and
	(ii) '.
	No. 239, page 1, line 12, after 'excluding', insert—
	'(i) Article 2, paragraph 45. inserted Article 27a TEC (TFEU), relating to customs co-operation; and
	(ii) '.
	No. 234, page 1, line 12, after 'excluding', insert—
	'(i) Article 2, paragraph 78, Article 88 TEC (TFEU), inserted paragraph 4 enabling the Commission to adopt regulations relating to the categories of State aid the Council has exempted from the State aid authorisation procedure; and
	(ii) '.
	No. 238, page 1, line 12, after 'excluding', insert—
	'(i) Article 2, paragraph 83, amendment to Article 96 TEC (TFEU) providing that directives to deal with distortions in competition shall be subject to the ordinary legislative procedure; and
	(ii) '.
	No. 235, page 1, line 12, after 'excluding', insert—
	'(i) Article 2, paragraph 158, inserted Article 188C TEC (TFEU), relating to the common commercial policy; and
	(ii) '.
	No. 224, page 1, line 12, after 'excluding', insert—
	'(i) the provision for a "special committee" to assist the Commission in negotiating and concluding agreements under the Common Commercial Policy contained in Article 2, paragraph 158, inserted Article 188C TEC (TFEU), paragraph 3; and
	(ii) '.
	No. 195, page 1, line 12, after 'excluding', insert—
	'(i) the Protocol on the Internal Market and Competition; and
	(ii) '.
	(a), in line 1, after 'Competition', insert
	', unless arrangements have been made for the Secretary of State to report to Parliament each year on the operation and application of European Union competition policy according to the principle set out in the Protocol'.
	No. 215, page 1, line 12, after 'excluding', insert—
	'(i) Annexed Protocol No. 1 Amending the Protocols Annexed to the Treaty on European Union, to the Treaty establishing the European Community and/or to the Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community, Article 1, paragraph 20(h), relating to the application to the United Kingdom and Ireland of measures relating to the free movement of persons, services and capital; and
	(ii) '.
	No. 223, page 1, line 12, after 'excluding', insert—
	'(i) any provision relating to the Internal Market in so far as it could be applied to healthcare services; and
	(ii) '.
	No. 72, page 1, line 12, after 'protocols', insert
	of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (which relates to measures to compensate for the economic disadvantages caused by the division of Germany to the economy of certain areas of the Federal Republic)'.
	No. 73, page 1, line 12, after 'protocols', insert
	of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (which relates to aid granted to certain areas of the Federal Republic of Germany affected by the division of Germany and the power of repeal by the Council)'.
	No. 138, page 1, line 12, after 'excluding', insert—
	'(i) Article 2, paragraph 73, amendment to Article 78 TEC (TFEU) permitting the repeal of that Article (which relates to the economic disadvantages caused by the division of Germany); and
	(ii) '.
	No. 139, page 1, line 12, after 'excluding', insert—
	'(i) Article 2, paragraph 77, amendment to Article 78 (2)(c) TEC (TFEU) permitting the repeal of that provision (which relates to the economic disadvantages caused by the division of Germany); and
	(ii) '.
	No. 236, in clause 8, page 4, line 8, leave out 'on Royal Assent' and add
	'when arrangements have been made for the Secretary of State to report to Parliament each year on the operation and application of European Union competition policy according to the principle set out in the Protocol on the Internal Market and Competition'.

David Heathcoat-Amory: That is what happens when countries export their powers as we have done, and grant a monopoly to a jurisdiction that they do not control.
	The single market powers, as expanded in the treaty, will not protect us. I cannot be alone in witnessing deindustrialisation in my constituency. It must be even greater in more industrialised areas further north. I have seen manufacturing firms relocate from my constituency to eastern Europe as part of the single market. I have no quarrel with that if the firms are simply moving into another part of the European Union that can exert its comparative advantage of lower costs and perhaps greater efficiency. But they are doing that on subsidies given to them in the European Union budget. The workers in my constituency, through the taxes they pay on their wages, are contributing to the budget and paying to have their jobs relocated. They are contributing to the undermining of their own security. Of course, the situation is getting worse. Under the European Communities (Finance) Bill, which we debated and passed last month, our net contributions will go up to £6 billion a year. The bulk of that increase will go towards giving additional subsidies to the newer countries of the EU to aid the process of transferring jobs from this country.
	Any idea that the EU is somehow a protective organisation is at variance with the facts. In my view, the EU is emphasising the rights of workers to move because of the fantasy that people displaced in such a way can relocate, as they do in the United States. The US is a genuinely free market within a single country. People locate from one state to another. They speak the same language and they have the same federal laws. If that is the aim for the EU, we should be told. It is quite wrong to expect that workers should pursue their jobs in different parts of the country and the different—

Colin Burgon: As ever, Mrs. Heal, I hang on your every word. You have told us to be precise and to the point, so I shall try to do that. I know that many other Members wish to speak.
	I rise to speak to amendment No. 224, which has been tabled in my name and those of other enlightened colleagues. It might appear to be a technical amendment, but I would argue that it goes to the very heart of the debate that many of us have wanted to have during the passage of the Bill. We are essentially arguing for a social Europe, rather than a neo-liberal Europe.
	The amendment deals with a provision in article 2, paragraph 158 of the Lisbon treaty, which replaces the old article 133 establishing the common commercial policy. That part of the treaty forms the underpinning for the single market. The new article 188 includes the existing provision for a special committee appointed by the Council to advise the Commission when negotiating trade agreements. No doubt hon. Members are thinking that this sounds a bit boring and bureaucratic, but it is a tremendously exciting subject—they should not be put off by the anaesthetising language that usually emanates from Europe. I can already sense the vibration going round the Chamber.
	The so-called article 133 committee, perhaps to be known as the article 188 committee if the Bill is passed, is one of the most serious concerns among the international development non-governmental organisations. Ministers have constantly cited those NGOs when praying in aid their support for a few of the treaty provisions in the development aid sections of the treaty, although I think that they have somewhat overegged the pudding. Either way, the Trade Justice Movement, representing all the major NGOs and trade unions and including the TUC, has this afternoon issued a new statement on the treaty outlining its broad concerns about the trade sections of the Bill, in particular its objection to the operation of the article 133 committee. It is fair to say that the Trade Justice Movement supports the thrust of my amendment, and I hope that the Minister will take it as seriously now as the Foreign Secretary did when he mentioned it in support of his arguments on Second Reading. Its concern is that the European Union's role in international trade is perhaps the biggest single force behind global neo-liberalism. At the same time, international trade is also perhaps the biggest single role of the EU.
	However, that transfer of power to the EU has not been accompanied by a comparable increase in transparency, democracy or accountability, especially not to this Parliament. Indeed, Commissioner Mandelson—I nearly called him Comrade Mandelson—is now one of the world's most powerful bureaucrats, and he will be even more so once this treaty is passed with the provisions for exclusive competence on trade. At this stage, I will resist a launch into a critique of neo-liberalism and move swiftly on. One influence that member states do still have over Commissioner Mandelson is through our representation on the article 133 committee, yet that committee is even less democratically accountable to us than even other EU institutions.
	Most Members will be aware of the role of the article 133 committee, but in case one or two do not, I will summarise it. It scrutinises, amends and approves Commission proposals for EU negotiating mandates on trade arrangements. Its members attend the international negotiations as part of the EU delegation, and they are usually the largest single delegation at World Trade Organisation talks. Indeed, I believe that 800 EU representatives attended the last WTO talks, which demonstrates the EU's sheer power in the WTO. The committee agrees EU position papers in principle which are, as I understand it—the Minister will put me right if I am not correct—passed for formal approval, first, by the Committee of Permanent Representatives, which again comprises unelected bureaucrats, and then by the Council, where they finally reach elected Ministers representing our national Governments. However, approval usually comes at what is called in Euro-jargon an A point, which means that the policies are endorsed without discussion.
	Over the years, more and more issues have become settled by the article 133 committee, and Ministers rarely debate EU negotiating mandates at the political level. Nor do we have any power in this Parliament to mandate the Minister, let alone officials. We cannot even find out how people voted, because the committee does not seem to take formal votes. It seems very hard to get information about the committee. I understand that we are represented on it, but we still cannot find out the necessary information. It deliberates in secret and publishes neither agenda nor minutes, and records of how decisions are taken are not made available to the public.
	It is true that copies of outcomes of meetings can be requested by members of the public, but they take several weeks to arrive and are so heavily censored as to be meaningless. For example, about two thirds of the text is often deleted, and all references to the positions taken by participants are simply blacked out. It is therefore impossible to hold our Government to account for the positions that they take in our name.

William Cash: I am simply making the point—I am not trying to avoid the ruling—that, ultimately, I had to say:
	"We must learn to live in the modern world... of protectionist pressures",
	which are inherent in the problems of exclusive and shared competence that we are considering today. I continued:
	"We must bear in mind the consequences of giving legal effect to the proposals in the Single Act. The European Court of Justice will be involved. We must be sure that we know what we are doing. Who will control it all? The Government? Parliament? The Commission?"—[ Official Report, 23 April 1986; Vol. 96, c. 378-9.]
	By Parliament, I meant this Parliament. I simply wanted to get that point on the record.
	I repent because it has become abundantly clear from all our debates in the past few days that the European Court of Justice and our inability to invade the acquis communautaire, unless we have a "notwithstanding" formula, will prevent us from achieving our objectives.
	The Lisbon agenda has been mentioned several times and I especially commend the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper), who enlarged the debate to encompass subjects that matter. The internalisation of the market is in the framework of the current proposals. We are dealing with an internal market but also with protectionism within it. There have been several exchanges about Mr. Sarkozy's comments. Our main objectives should be to look outwards, as my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean said, to a globalised economy, as I attempted to predict—I believe correctly—some 20 years ago in 1986. I believed that the single market was intended to operate in that way. It has not worked in that way. Indeed, it has internalised, not externalised and it has therefore failed. That is why the Lisbon agenda has failed.
	The Minister for Europe is not personally responsible for the documents that relate to the Lisbon agenda, which were submitted to the European Scrutiny Committee in January. However, he is representing the Government and I simply want to repeat the European Scrutiny Committee's comments about those documents. We were given an analysis and I am sorry to say that we had to be critical of the Government's response to them. In a nutshell, we said that the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury could not justify the report that she gave. That related to the entire Lisbon agenda and every single matter dealing with competition policy and the re-launching of all the initiatives that had failed since 2000, in respect of which Will Hutton, the rapporteur and an extremely distinguished economist, made some critical comments to the European Reform Forum, which I helped to initiate.
	We in the Committee said that the degree of explanation in the
	"two...paragraphs in the Treasury's Explanatory Memorandum, one of which is little more than an elaboration of the titles of the seven documents and annexes concerned, is a wholly inadequate description of the content of the almost 400 pages of these papers."
	The Committee asked the Exchequer Secretary to ensure that the documents would explain things properly in the future, and so on. I mention that because it is made clear in the documents that those who run the European Community are aware of a thing called reform fatigue. There is a reluctance to tackle issues that require reform, and we are not getting the reform required.
	Let me turn to the question of exclusive competence—I shall deal with shared competence in a minute. The article in question—article 2B—concerns the enhanced approach through which the Union will grab and maintain new areas of exclusive competence. In particular, it will dictate competition rules. We heard an interesting speech from the erstwhile temporary leader of the Liberal Democrats, the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable), but as I pointed out to him, he missed the main point. Although he explained the layer upon layer of development of the internal market, the reality is that we have reached an apex and have to retrieve the situation in order to prevent the overregulation that is literally destroying British business and European business, too.
	In fact, the leviathan has engulfed the European single market. That is the problem, and it cannot be changed except by invading those regulations and the acquis communautaire, and by ensuring that we reform all the regulations—

William Cash: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, but in a spirit of amity with my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal, who I find to be a most engaging person, and because he went to church this morning—even though he did not repent—let me say how glad I am to move back to the issue of exclusive competence. If we carried on any further with our current topic of debate, I suspect that the Chairman might well intervene and encourage us to return to the issue of exclusive competence.
	As I was saying before I was diverted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal, the Union will grab and maintain new areas of exclusive competence. In particular, the Union will dictate competition rules, misleadingly justified under the functioning of the internal market as an exclusive competence. Currently, article 5 of the treaty on the European Union stresses that in areas that do not fall within its exclusive competence, the Community shall take action in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity
	"only if and in so far as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States and can therefore by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better achieved by the Community".
	That represents a big problem, because it makes certain assumptions. First, it assumes that subsidiarity can be applied, but as I have said in previous debates, I simply do not believe that it ever has been. Secondly, there is the problem that somebody has to judge what is being "better achieved". Indeed, it has not been determined in which areas the Community has exclusive competence, which has inevitably led to legal disputes.
	The European Court of Justice has been recognising the exclusive power of the Community within certain areas where it had not previously had competence. Now it has those competences and the new article is a reflection of ECJ practices and existing case law. The European Community common policy approach will take greater precedence than British obligations to third countries and Commonwealth countries, for example. That matter relates to what the hon. Member for Elmet (Colin Burgon) said a few moments ago about third and Commonwealth countries and the representations of non-governmental organisations. I take a great interest in matters pertaining to aid, as does my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal and my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley), who chairs one of our policy groups on international aid. We should take very careful note of the way in which economic partnership agreements are working and of the damage that that is doing. As I was saying, European Community common policy will take greater precedence than British obligations to third and Commonwealth countries, and the European Court of Justice has said that we would
	"no longer have the right"
	to maintain existing relations.
	That is the seriousness of the situation. The European Court has said, in relation to our obligations to third countries and Commonwealth countries, at the very time when we should expand our interest in the globalised economy—particularly in relation to India and its new-found opportunities, Malaysia, the all-party group on which I chair, and all the other Commonwealth countries with which we have a common heritage—that we will no longer have the right to maintain our existing relations. Control over the customs union, establishing the competition rules necessary for the functioning of the internal market, monetary policy, common commercial policy, the conservation of marine biological resources under the common fisheries policy—all are locked into the Union. On the last of those, the Union will be allowed further to regulate catches or ban fishing in several areas. To conserve stocks, therefore, fishing quotas will be further reduced. Moreover, the Lisbon treaty introduces the Union's exclusive competence to conclude an international agreement when
	"its conclusion is provided for in a legislative act of the Union or is necessary to enable the Union to exercise its internal competence, or insofar as its conclusion may affect common rules or alter their scope."
	Against that background, this is not a game. In relation to the realities of competition, it involves the whole question of the extent to which we are able to succeed as a country. As I said in an intervention on my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal, I simply do not agree that the whole of the European Union has been a success. As many statistics and figures demonstrate, regrettably, the European Union is dropping down the league. The predictions are that, largely because of over-regulation, the failure of initiatives such as the Lisbon agenda, and the failure of the integration process, by 2020 the EU'S actual GDP will take us even further down the league table. That will affect our constituents. We must therefore spring the trap and start renegotiating the treaties, and get ourselves into a relationship of an association of nation states.
	I would strongly recommend to Members a fascinating book that has just come out by Professor Paul Taylor, recently a professor of international relations and director of the European Institute at the London School of Economics. He has written about the failure of the European Union integration process. He gives examples of how the European Union has failed in relation to trade and other matters, and effectively argues that that failure has demonstrated that the Eurosceptic arguments, which have been developed over the past 20 years, have been proved right.
	Do I take great satisfaction from that? Twenty years ago, I did make this speech on the Single European Act, and I have not repented of the speech but I have repented of the vote. I take no satisfaction, and never have done, from the failings in the European Community or the European Union. In its origins, it was a good idea. In 1945, people probably would have thought that the European Coal and Steel Community and all the rest of it was the right thing to do. The bottom line, however, is that it has gone in the wrong direction.
	For example, on the question of exclusive competence, I would refer to another European Court of Justice case, Commission  v. Council, case 22-70, concerning a European agreement on road transport, better known as the ERTA case, in which the ECJ delineated the concept of exclusive competence. It stressed that
	"each time the Community, with a view to implementing a common policy envisaged by the Treaty, adopts provisions laying down common rules, whatever form these may take... the Member States no longer have the right, acting individually or even collectively, to undertake obligations with third countries which affect those rules or alter their scope."
	This provision in the treaty, with the single personality, will remove from the member states most of their current treaty-making powers in those areas.
	The Lisbon treaty has formalised the idea that member states' competences will be limited once the Union has acted. Article 2C includes the internal market as an area of shared competence. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wells and my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean touched on these issues. The article lists as areas of shared competence the internal market; social policy; economic, social and territorial cohesion; agriculture and fisheries; environment; consumer protection; transport; trans-European networks; energy; the area of freedom; security and justice; common safety concerns in public health matters; research; technology development and space; development co-operation; and humanitarian aid. Energy and space are new Union competences. A vast range of activity that should be in the remit of this Parliament and this Government will be handed over to European control.
	I believe, in a nutshell, that the European Union as a customs union will continue to prevent us from pursuing an independent trade policy. I believe that the rules establishing the internal market will remain the same and that an uncompetitive Europe will continue, with very serious consequences of the kind illustrated by my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean. The internal-market question is being internalised, and it is not being understood that we live in a global economy in which India, China, Malaysia and other countries are developing just as we developed in the 18th century. We want to work with them in a peaceable fashion.
	Free trade is the essence of peace and prosperity, as Cobden and Bright demonstrated in the mid-19th century. This is the key: we should understand that the rules that are being developed—involving the concentration of power, the apex of decision making being taken away from the free markets and the decisions becoming the arid, dry, desiccated decisions of the European Court of Justice—are not the way to go. They will not allow us to secure the flexibility in trade that I know is desired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron). He wants economic competitiveness, and I wholeheartedly support him in that aspiration. That and the sovereignty issue are two of the reasons why I voted for him in the leadership election.
	We must put our money where our mouth is. We will only secure that economic competitiveness if we change the basis on which the European Union functions, alter the rules relating to the customs union and the internal market, and return to the EFTA system. That has not yet been mentioned today. We should bring back the European Free Trade Association in a modified form. We need an association of nation states working peaceably together, within a framework that enables us to trade not only among ourselves but throughout the global order, as I said in my speech in April 1986.
	My hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Sir Michael Spicer) has just entered the Chamber. In 1996, with great prescience, he wrote a book about all these issues and the necessity to maintain free trade. He and I had such a firm alliance with others during the entire Maastricht proposals, in part because we eschewed the idea of a European Government and we wanted free trade, liberalised markets and to ensure that the internal market did not become protectionist. That is why we fought that battle.
	The politics of the treaty of Lisbon, the deceit that lay behind its origins, and the manner in which the mandate was imposed upon the people of this country and other European states in defiance of referendums in France and Holland, demonstrate that the politics has been leading the economics. I believe that democracy and freedom of choice must lead, and that this House represents the democracy of this country through its representatives. The politics of choice in politics must, however, be paralleled by the politics of choice in economics. That is what this debate is really about, and I totally agree with the exceptional speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean, because he identified the real problem that we must face up to in this globalised world.

Question put, That the amendment be made:—
	 The House divided: Ayes 135, Noes 336.

Hugo Swire: Seven or so years ago, a Home Office Minister said in a parliamentary answer on the task force for child protection that the
	"aim is to make the United Kingdom (UK) the best and safest place in the world for children to use the internet".—[ Official Report, 4 February 2002; Vol. 379, c. 671W.]
	Last year, however, 32 per cent. of children said that they had received unwanted, nasty or sexual comments while on the web. Freedom of information and the unhampered exchange of that information are, of course, at the heart of a free world. What we do not want is Government control of the internet, such as exists in China and elsewhere. The internet is a space for creativity, communication and a fantastic tool for use in education. Too often, any discussion of internet safety leads to the internet being labelled as a bad thing. Clearly, the reverse is the case, but internet users should expect a degree of protection not least from fraud and illegal content, and, for our children, from harmful content.
	I start by paying tribute to the impressive work of Dr. Tanya Byron and her Byron review, and I look forward with interest to her recommendations. The Culture, Media and Sport Committee—whose Chairman, my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale), is present—is about to start taking oral evidence on this issue, and my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) has put forward a private Member's Bill to classify video content downloads, in order to help protect children, among other things. So I believe that this subject is topical.
	Tonight's debate takes on increasing relevance given the recent spate of suicides in Bridgend. Today, we awoke to the tragic news that there had been a 14th victim. The hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs. Moon) has raised this in Parliament and has secured an Adjournment debate tomorrow, which I am sure will be well attended.
	The Government have the option to make content illegal, as they have with extreme pornography, race hatred and child abuse. The Government also have a role to protect children, and that is what I want to focus on this evening. Schools' hard-pressed IT departments do not have the resources, nor parents the know-how, to protect our children.
	Another problem is that eight Government Departments have an interest in internet content: the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice, the Department of Health, the Foreign Office, the Cabinet Office, the Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. There is a real lack of ownership within Government of internet content regulation.
	The Government can solve that by establishing a lead Department and developing a co-regulatory structure to regulate internet content, bringing together, for example, charities, parents, academics, relevant Government Departments, law enforcement agencies and the industry itself, to decide codes of conduct in grey areas. That could work along the lines of the Advertising Standards Authority or the Press Complaints Commission, and would replace the current piecemeal and knee-jerk codes of conduct and self-regulation; let us call it the "internet standards authority". Harmful content—that is content where cultural, taste and decency judgments have to be made—would come under the internet standards authority remit and could include glorification of violence and terrorism, pornography, cyber-bullying, suicide, internet gambling and anorexia websites, some of which Members might think are worth banning. However, the list is not exhaustive.
	The internet standards authority would build a dynamic filter and create a blacklist database which would be updated hourly. Internet service providers would then offer two choices of content, one for adults and one for children. I envisage the child content would be the default, with adult content accessed with a pin code, or some such protective device. South Korea is an example of where that ISP regulatory system has been successfully implemented, and Australia is considering it. Further filtering could continue at the personal computer level "on the fly" which would look for unacceptable terms and images.
	Robust internet filtering is a technological area that is fast developing, although it is not there yet, which is why I believe ISPs should take the lead in filtering at the network level. I know the British Standards Institution is developing a kitemark, which is a welcome, if belated, development. Hopefully, technological progress will solve some of the issues that we cannot control now. Webcams and peer-to-peer and encrypted content will always present challenges. I do not intend to predict future technological innovations, but filtering web 2.2 generation content when, for example, eight hours of footage per minute is uploaded on to YouTube, will present challenges.
	An internet standards authority would be more responsive to new internet trends and lighter on its feet than Government legislation. Perversely, ISPs are being held back from implementing best efforts to protect customers and children lest they be held liable for overblocking or for harmful content being accessed. A number of ISPs do offer content-filtering for children, such as AOL's KOL Jr. pre-school, KOL ages six to 12 and RED ages 13 to 17, and I welcome that, but ISPs are as concerned as I am about the low take-up of available tools. That is why I believe my opt-out approach has merit. An internet standards authority would have the ability to promote its work and improve transparency while also educating parents and ensuring that children surf responsibly.
	Promoting a safer environment and raising awareness—what I describe as soft power improvements—also present challenges and will cost money. Internet playgrounds should be supervised in the same way as parks used to be supervised. We need to empower parents and teachers so they are able to supervise, advise and guide children in exploring the online world.
	We need to set up a new co-regulatory structure, an internet standards authority, to fight illegal and harmful content, promote a safer environment and raise awareness. ISPs should deliver an acceptable service for children whereby they would be able safely to access the internet while adults could access all other content through a PIN or similar device. We should ensure that internet companies that advertise carry responsibility messages, such as those we see on alcohol advertising and cigarette packages. A hotline number in the UK is operated by the excellent Internet Watch Foundation, and it should be displayed. We need to empower parents, teachers and children in respect of their responsibilities and the risks of going online. Finally, any internet-ready platform should be sold with a robust, self-updating, tamper-proof internet filter pre-installed.
	Those proposals are not about censorship; they are about creating the regulatory environment to enable our children to surf safely, so that they can expand the horizons of their knowledge. Of course, I do not believe we can remove all risk to children, but we can make this country a safer place in what, at times, seems to be an increasingly dangerous world for our children.

Vernon Coaker: I will address that issue, but as chair of the Home Secretary's taskforce for child protection on the internet I have worked with officials from many Departments, who come to the meetings and are involved in developing good practice and discussing the various issues. The Department for Children, Schools and Families is a new Department, with a particular emphasis on preventing harm to children and protecting families, and that is one reason why the Byron review is being conducted under that Department. However, I have also met Dr. Byron, and will do so again, to talk about the work that we are doing. I know that she is especially interested in the way that the taskforce has taken the agenda forward. It has brought not only Departments together, but industry and children's charities—those who have an interest in making progress in this area.
	Whatever system we set up—and the Committee chaired by the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford may also consider that—it is important to ensure that the work of Departments is co-ordinated and that we involve industry and stakeholders in the machinery of government. We will see over the next few weeks that that collaboration and co-operation has resulted in significant progress, without any debate about possible legislation.
	The hon. Member for East Devon mentioned the terrible events in Bridgend, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs. Moon) has a debate on the issue tomorrow. She has already met with various people to discuss those events. I wish to extend my sympathy to the families and all those affected. However, the issues behind the deaths are likely to be very complicated. We are very much aware of some media reports claiming that there is an internet aspect to these incidents, but other reports cast doubt on that. It would be wrong to prejudge the investigations that are already taking place, and we will wish to follow further developments closely.
	We also recognise that young people will discuss many difficult issues, including that of suicide, on various websites. That requires very sensitive handling and we need to be wary of preventing them from discussing their thoughts and feelings openly. We are working, through the Home Secretary's taskforce for child protection on the internet, with social networking companies to ensure that there are links to support bodies such as ChildLine and the Samaritans for those who seek support and advice on this issue.
	On the very separate matter of what are commonly referred to as suicide websites, the Government have been working with service providers to discourage them from hosting sites that appear to encourage suicide. While the internet remains a fantastic environment for obtaining all sorts of information, there is no doubt that it does have a darker side. Indeed, the Prime Minister has recently shown his concern about the issue of harmful and inappropriate content by setting up the Byron review. The Byron review team has been doing a lot of work to gather views from all stakeholders, and is due to report in March. The Home Office fully supports the review, and looks forward to seeing the final report. I have met with Dr. Byron and her team, as I said, and have been impressed by the work that they are doing—indeed, one member of her team attended the most recent taskforce meeting—and the approach that they are taking in working with all groups to look at the problems in this area.
	The internet and mobile technologies have helped to provide children with education, entertainment, and the ability to communicate with their friends. These technologies bring our children new opportunities and lots of fun, but we need to balance that with the risks and worries that parents have about their children accessing inappropriate content.
	There is no doubt that most of the time the internet is a safe place, and the Government have encouraged its use in schools and the home. It therefore rightly falls on Government to help to develop a response to help protect our children and we have been active in that area. Since 2001, the Home Secretary's taskforce has been a very successful method of bringing together Departments, industry, law enforcement and charities to develop measures to help protect children from illegal content and sexual predators in the fast-moving world of technology and the internet.
	The taskforce is periodically reviewing its membership and is eager to include all bodies involved in protecting children online. Indeed, cyber-bullying is a relatively new phenomenon and we are looking to widen the range of partners involved in the taskforce in order to look at the issue more closely. I look forward to meeting the Under-Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan), to discuss the matter in the near future.
	I would welcome further information from the hon. Member for East Devon on the South Korean model that he mentioned. That could be a good focus for the meeting that I suggested. If the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford wants to come to that meeting, I would be happy to hear in more detail about the points that he has made. I am not averse to learning from other countries. If they have something that might benefit us, we ought to try to learn from that. I will be happy to meet both hon. Gentlemen and to talk to them about that model.
	I welcome the support that industry has given to the process, which I believe is an exceptionally useful method for tackling issues effectively and in a collaborative way through self-regulation and without the need for legislation. One of the major pieces of work that the taskforce has recently completed is the definition of a British Standards Institution specification for filtering tools for home users of the internet. Although filtering tools have been around for many years now, concerns have been raised about the effectiveness of the tools and their usability.
	The new specification will allow the developers of filtering products to test them against the standard designed to protect children and other users from illegal or unsuitable content. That specification has been developed with the BSI, Ofcom and industry and will be launched in the near future. Companies whose products pass the tests will be able to display the child safety online kitemark on their products, allowing members of the public to identify them as having reached that standard. I want to encourage as many companies as possible that offer filtering products to the market to apply for the kitemark once it is launched. I am sure that we all hope that that will happen.
	All hon. Members will also be aware that the internet is misused by paedophiles to share and distribute terrible images of children being sexually abused. We also know that adults will use the internet to gain access to children and young people so that they can groom them for sexual abuse. I am sure that we all agree that everything that can be done should be done to prevent the distribution of these images and to protect children from unwanted contact from predatory adults.
	The Internet Watch Foundation was funded and formed by the industry in 1996 following agreement between the Government, police and the internet industry that a partnership approach was needed to tackle the distribution of child sexual abuse images on the internet. The IWF operates the only authorised hotline in the UK for the public to report their inadvertent exposure to illegal content on the internet, providing a notice and take-down service to internet service providers in the UK so they can remove potentially illegal content from their servers. The IWF works closely with law enforcement agencies at home and abroad to help them trace offenders.
	The IWF estimates that since 2003, less than 1 per cent. of child abuse image websites are hosted in the UK compared to 18 per cent. in 1996. We would all like that figure to be 0 per cent., but that shows considerable progress. In addition, the IWF has developed a service to provide a list of URLs where illegal images are hosted. That list, which has been made available to the industry, enables the sites containing child abuse images to be blocked.
	Since 2004, blocking of these sites on consumer broadband in the UK has gone from nothing to 95 per cent., thanks to the work carried out by the industry. The Home Office is working with a number of smaller ISPs to identify ways that they can implement blocking economically. Once that has been done, the number of connections covered by blocking will rise further.

Vernon Coaker: One problem is that paedophiles will always try to find a way around our attempts to keep them out. The guidance on social networking that we will publish soon will look at what is good practice for ISPs in tackling that problem, but CEOP—the child exploitation and online protection centre—and other organisations are also taking the law enforcement approach. If the hon. Gentleman has not visited Jim Gamble and CEOP already, he should consider doing so, as that would enable him to see all the different types of work being undertaken. The people involved—police officers, technical experts and others—are very dedicated in their attempts to trap the paedophiles who use the internet in such a horrific way.
	The work is hi-tech, because paedophiles who suspect that they have been traced tend to move on. Moreover, they have astonishing technical expertise in using the internet, and that can be countered only by people with matching ability. I am sure that anyone who sees what is being done by CEOP will be as impressed as I have been.
	Blocking is not an issue for personal computers only: with more and more children using mobile phones, and with mobile phone technology growing exponentially, it is imperative that we engage with that part of the industry. All UK mobile phone providers are members of the Home Secretary's taskforce and have actively supported the development of good practice models. They are also members of the IWF and have agreed to block customer access to sites that the IWF has listed as containing illegal images of child abuse.
	Mobile telephone operators in the UK have been pioneers in the protection of their child customers. They have shown that they take protecting children from inappropriate content very seriously, and they were the first in the world to publish a self-regulatory content code for mobiles. That requires customers to prove that they are at least 18 years of age before they can get access to adult commercial content.
	As chair of the taskforce for child protection on the internet, I know how important it is to ensure that we remain ahead of the game when it comes to protecting children. I am proud of the taskforce's work: it has attracted interest from around the world, with many people asking how it operates. Since its inception, the taskforce has developed good practice guidance for web services, the internet, relay chat, safe searching and moderation services, but we all know that the internet keeps evolving. For example, very few of us had heard of social networking sites 18 months ago, but many millions of people now have profiles or web pages on such sites.
	A multi-stakeholder project group from the taskforce has been working on developing good practice guidance for social networking and user interactive services. Leading players in the industry—and especially those involved in providing social networking services—along with CEOP, the child protection charities and others have been involved in, and contributed to, the production of the good practice guidance. I am pleased to say that the document will be launched in the near future, and I should like to ask the hon. Members for East Devon and for Maldon and East Chelmsford to attend that event. I hope that they will be able to accept that invitation.
	As most hon. Members will be aware, CEOP was established in April 2006 to tackle the abuse and exploitation of children and young people, particularly from sexual predators who use the internet to distribute illegal images of children and young people, and to gain access to them so that they can be groomed for abuse. Staffed by the police, as well as child protection, education and industry specialists, the centre provides a single online 24-hour-a-day mechanism for reporting those who seek to use the internet to abuse children.
	On a point that the hon. Member for East Devon raised, CEOP launched and ran an education programme, which last year reached 1.1 million children and their parents. He made the important point that we must educate not only children, but parents, so that they understand what their children can do on the internet. I am sure he that, like me, finds that when he talks to parents, they sometimes have a much more limited understanding of the virtual world than their children do. We all have a big role to play in trying to help parents understand what is possible on the internet, so that they can work with their children to try to protect them, although the state must do its bit, too.
	As I say, CEOP works with parents, and it plans to ensure that a further 3.5 million children are reached over the next two years, and that every primary school is provided with free resources. It also runs the thinkuknow website for children, parents and teachers. Since CEOP began operating in April 2006, some 240 offenders have been arrested, three paedophile rings have been smashed, and 138 children have been rescued from harm. That is a major achievement for UK law enforcement, and the creation of CEOP makes it clear that we are determined to protect children in the digital environment.
	Today's children are sophisticated users of the internet, and their knowledge of it is ever-evolving, but we should never forget that they are children. Protecting them must therefore continue to be one of our priorities. The fact that the work is about protecting children in our communities can often get lost in all the technology issues. A collaborative approach to tackling the issue is essential if we are to prevent the exploitation of children on the internet. By working together with industry, Government, law enforcement agencies, children's charities and other interested parties, the taskforce has made progress in protecting children online. However, I recognise that there is always more to be done.
	I welcome the Byron review, and I welcome the hon. Gentleman's debate. I look forward to meeting him, and perhaps the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford, to discuss the subject, and in particular the Korean model that the hon. Member for East Devon presented to us. We can discuss that and many other matters, while we all pursue our common goal of doing all that we can to protect our children on the internet.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at twenty-three minutes to Nine o'clock.

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